The Edge of the Abyss

Summary

A porcelain-skinned socialite, Alma Clayton—half firefly, half moth—flutters between two masculine flames: Neil Webster, the privileged boy who offers her moonlit gardens, and Wayne Burrous, the criminal-defense virtuoso whose tongue could pardon the devil. One opulent banquet later, she is hypnotized by Wayne’s rhetoric, jilts Neil, and migrates into a marble aviary where her new husband’s obsession with jurisprudence leaves her echoing alone among tapestries. Boredom curdles into petulance; Wayne relocates to his club, leaving Alma to rattle around a palace of reproachful mirrors. A chance boutique encounter rekindles Neil, now embittered, who swears his ardor is ash—yet within hours he is in her drawing room confessing the opposite, brandishing revenge like a boutonnière. While the two waver on the verge of an elopement that would torch reputations, a third silhouette slips through the French window: Jim Sims, a career cracksman whose fingers remember every lock but whose conscience remembers a single debt—Wayne once plucked him from the jaws of prison when he was penniless. Pocketing sovereigns, Sims freezes at the portrait of the lawyer, quietly returns the spoils, and is about to ghost away when overheard lovers’ quarrels detour him into moral umpire. Gun drawn, he trusses Neil to a chair like a recalcitrant parcel, escorts Alma upstairs, and stages an impromptu trial in which gratitude, honor, and social annihilation serve as exhibits. The burglar’s closing argument—equal parts street-corner homily and existential ultimatum—shatters Alma’s self-pity. Neil, writhing still tied, jaws a telephone receiver, gasps a false alarm; police burst in, free him, and later pummel him in the garden, mistaking the jilted dandy for the intruder. Alma spirits Sims out, presses Wayne’s photograph into the thief’s grateful palm, and rings her husband. Curtain falls on reconciliation, the butterfly having molted into something sturdier than wings.

Synopsis

Alma Clayton is a butterfly type of girl. She is being wooed by a gilded youth, Neil Webster, whom she likes to a degree. At a public banquet Alma becomes acquainted with Wayne Burrous, a brilliant criminal lawyer, and won by the man's eloquence, she casts Neil aside and eventually marries Wayne. Her husband's strict attention to business piques her, and it results in Wayne leaving her use of their large mansion while he takes up his residence in the club. Alma, while out shopping with a friend, meets Neil, who tells her that his love for her is gone. At home she calls him by telephone. He arrives at Alma's home, and informs her that what he said about his love for her is not true, and that he is actuated by the desire of revenging himself on Wayne for winning her away from him. She is undetermined whether to elope with him or not. Meanwhile Jim Sims, a burglar, breaks into Wayne's room. After taking a number of gold and silver pieces his eye fixes on a portrait of Wayne. He recognizes it as representing the lawyer who had once saved him from jail, although Sims was penniless: He carefully replaces the articles from his sack to the dresser and is about to leave empty-handed on account of respect for his benefactor when he hears the excited conversation of Alma and Neil. He steals down the stairs and suddenly confronts them just as Alma is about to yield and go away with Neil. At the point of his gun he makes Neil sit quietly, while Alma is compelled to tie him with a rope to his chair. Then Sims makes the woman go upstairs to Wayne's room, where he shows her the picture of her husband and tells her of his saving Sims from jail. The burglar insists that such a man could not be the brute that she thinks him. He is so forceful in the presentation of the claims of Wayne and of the penalty that she would have to pay if she should break the laws of society that the woman is won over. Then Neil manages to drag himself, still securely bound to the chair, over to a telephone. He gets the receiver off the hook with his teeth and calls the police. On their arrival Neil is released. Alma hides the burglar and tells the officers that the burglar escaped through a window. When they are gone she rejects Neil. Neil goes out the back door, is mistaken for the burglar and is badly beaten up by an officer. Alma gives the burglar the picture of her husband as a souvenir of gratitude for his aid in setting her right. She then calls up her husband, and on his return there is a happy reconciliation.